Higher Ways

The past few weeks have been an opportunity to prioritize faith over feelings… to set my mind on higher things… to take my thoughts captive and focus them on God’s big picture.

It is so easy for all of us to get bogged down in the daily grind… but for me, lately, it’s been all too easy to slip into mental darkness… It starts as acknowledging the loss we feel for the boys that are no longer ours. Our loss. Their loss. It grows to thinking about the conditions orphans endure… the desperate decisions the hungry and impoverished have to make… and then I just spiral down to complete discouragement with this world. The problems. The suffering. The injustices.

I am so grateful for who I am, where I am, what God has entrusted to me. But when I’m in this gloomy emotional state, the things for which I am grateful actually feel negative. Petty concerns. Anxieties born of affluence. First world problems.

Accepting that "our" boys are not going to be adopted by us, or anyone, has felt similar to when I returned home from mission trips in the past... Acknowledgement of perceived unfairness... Reconciliation of such different worlds... Re-entry into the excess... Detachment from what you thought was important before your eyes were opened... I’ve had to learn and am now again re-learning to let God soften my heart so that I’m not pessimistic, critical or judgmental towards myself or others.

The truth is that I can't save every child in this world. But... I CAN have faith in God’s goodness. I CAN trust His higher thoughts & ways. I CAN hold all that I have with open hands. I CAN choose joy and gratitude. He WILL be faithful.  

This remains one of my favorite
photos from a past mission trip...

“I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work,” God’s Decree. 

“For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think. Just as rain and snow descend from the skies and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth, doing their work of making things grow and blossom, producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry,So will the words that come out of my mouth not come back empty-handed. They’ll do the work I sent them to do, they’ll complete the assignment I gave them.” Isaiah 55:8-11